What is visioning and what is the point of
it in your creative career?

In 5 years time, we will all be
somewhere. Do you want to choose where
you will be or just allow yourself to drift and hope for the best?

The benefits of having a vision include:

Giving you a direction and a purpose:

Think about planning a holiday. When deciding where to go, you start thinking
about different places, imagining what they will be like and what you can do
there. Then you start to make concrete
plans: how you will travel, how long it will take, where you will stay. How could you plan your holiday if you hadn’t
had the vision of where you were going?
The same goes with your career.

Keeping you focussed and positive,
especially when things go wrong:

It would be great to say that if you think
happy thoughts only happy things happen, but life isn’t like that. However, by being positive and keeping your
mind focussed, you will be more resilient when any negative stuff comes along.

Giving you a clear message you can
communicate to others who might be able to help you:

You never know who you are talking to. The theory of 6 degrees of separation says
that you are at most only 6 people away from the person you want to meet. The problem is we don’t know how that chain
of 6 people fits together. That person
you might be casually talking to tomorrow could be the indirect key to your
future. If you can quickly and
passionately communicate your vision, you can enrol them in helping you to reach
it.

Focussing you and heightening your awareness
to opportunities:

How many times have you thought of buying
something and suddenly you notice it everywhere? Just think of buying a red car and then red
cars are all you see on the roads. Nothing
has changed except your perception. With
your vision clearly in your mind, you will start to see everything from within
that context and find yourself thinking “how can this person / situation /
group etc. get me to my vision”.

It makes you more proactive

You are more able to make informed decisions
about your career and just take charge of it, rather than being buffeted by
circumstance.

It is a key element for funding

Whether you are looking for an investor or
are applying to a trust, they will want to know what your overall vision is and
what you want to achieve. Having a clear
purpose makes you seem more serious in terms of funding.

What
should your vision be?

Your vision should be true to yourself and
should inspire you. If you are inspired,
you in turn will inspire others.

To help you find your vision:

go back to what originally made
you become a creative person

look at your values in life

think about what inspires you

notice when you are
professionally most happy

When you start thinking about your vision,
take away all restraints, real and imaged.
Think of what your perfect professional life would look like and make
the image as big as you can.

Now, in reality, none of us have a blank
sheet in our lives. We have the rent to
pay, the family to think about, the children settled in schools, etc. If you start building your vision from where
you are now, it cannot help but be limited, because you will be thinking from a
mindset of “I can’t do that because ... “.
It is only natural. However, if you
start by thinking of the unlimited vision, it is more powerful to then look at
how you can get from your current situation to your vision. Your vision may take years to reach, so you
wouldn’t necessarily be changing your whole life at once, but you can start
making small changes and getting on track.

2 Comments to Visioning:

This is just what I needed today...thank you. I am going to retweet this. It is so easy to 'let lost' and lose the real essence of why you set up your company. I wrote a really comprehensive 'Business Plan' when I first started my business....and for a couple of years it went according to plan....then is went a bit misty and now it's possitively lost in the fog of time. So you have prompted me to write a new one and really look at where I want to be in 2, 5, 10 years time!